The compensation of harmonic disturbances is a subject that has attracted the attention of many researchers in the last decades. In this sense, repetitive control arises as a practical solution to such issue and is based on the well-known internal model principle. For a detailed description of the internal model principle, reference is made to B. Francis and W. Wonham, “The internal model principle for linear multivariable regulators,” Applied Mathematics and Optimization, Vol. 2, pp. 170-194, 1975, which is incorporated by reference. For a description of a stability study of linear infinite dimensional repetitive controllers, reference is made to S. Hara, Y. Yamamoto, T. Omata and M. Nakano, “Repetitive control systems: A new type servo systems and its applications,” IEEE Trans. Automat. Contr., Vol. 33, No. 7, pp. 659-667, 1988 and the numerous references therein. Repetitive control is a potential solution to many precision systems, such as industrial robots, disc drives, numerical control machines, and servo scanners. Roughly speaking, repetitive control is applicable to almost any system that rotates or repeats the same task on a periodic time basis. The harmonic compensation issue can have a special impact in the power electronics and power systems applications where the disturbances to cancel and/or reference signals to track are composed of specific higher harmonics of the fundamental frequency of the power supply. There is a high potential in using repetitive control on power electronic systems such as rectifiers, inverters and active filters.
The internal model principle states that a controlled output can track a class of reference commands without a steady state error if the generator (or the model) of the reference is included in the stable closed-loop system. Therefore, it can be used to provide exact asymptotic output tracking of periodic inputs or to reject periodic disturbances. It is well known that the generator of a sinusoidal signal (i.e., a signal containing only one harmonic component) is a harmonic oscillator or, in other words, a resonant filter.
Thus, following this idea, if a periodic signal has an infinite Fourier series (of harmonic components), then an infinite number of harmonic oscillators are required to track or reject such a periodic signal. Fortunately, in the repetitive control approach, a simple delay line in a proper feedback array can be used to produce an infinite number of poles and thereby simulate a bank of an infinite number of harmonic oscillators leading to a system dynamics of infinite dimension. The delay line is also referred to as a transport (digital or analog) delay. The use of repetitive control for a reduction of periodic disturbances with frequencies corresponding to the specific frequencies is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,740,090, where the transfer function of the controller includes an infinite number of poles, with no zeros introduced between the poles.